First and second sound in two-dimensional bosonic and fermionic superfluids

TL;DR

This paper reviews theoretical insights into first and second sound propagation in 2D ultracold bosonic and fermionic superfluids, comparing models with recent experimental data and exploring sound mode mixing at finite temperatures.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive theoretical analysis of sound velocities in 2D superfluids, including modeling recent experiments and predicting mode mixing phenomena.

Findings

Superfluid density matches experimental data for 39K atoms.

First-sound speed agrees with measurements for 6Li atoms in BCS regime.

Mode mixing occurs only in the finite-temperature BEC regime.

Abstract

We review our theoretical results about the sound propagation in two-dimensional (2D) systems of ultracold fermionic and bosonic atoms. In the superfluid phase, characterized by the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the $U(1)$ symmetry, there is the coexistence of first and second sound. In the case of weakly-interacting repulsive bosons, we model the recent measurements of the sound velocities of 39K atoms in 2D obtained in the weakly-interacting regime and around the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) superfluid-to-normal transition temperature. In particular, we perform a quite accurate computation of the superfluid density and show that it is reasonably consistent with the experiment. For superfluid attractive fermions, we calculate the first and second sound velocities across the whole BCS-BEC crossover. In the low-temperature regime we reproduce the recent measurements of first-sound speed with 6Li atoms. We also predict that only in the finite-temperature BEC regime there is mixing between sound modes.